[Peace] Re: Peace Digest, Vol 57, Issue 20
Matt Murrey
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Mon Oct 20 16:56:51 CDT 2008
Please, please, please limit posts to this list to include events and announcements NOT material for discussion and debate.
--- On Mon, 10/20/08, peace-request at lists.chambana.net <peace-request at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
From: peace-request at lists.chambana.net <peace-request at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: Peace Digest, Vol 57, Issue 20
To: peace at lists.chambana.net
Date: Monday, October 20, 2008, 12:00 PM
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Howard Zinn opines. (Joe Berry)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:30:23 -0500
From: Joe Berry <joeberry at igc.org>
Subject: Re: [Peace] Howard Zinn opines.
To: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
Cc: Peace-discuss Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>,
peace at anti-war.net
Message-ID: <E8C7C96C-D0C4-49F6-89BF-8944614EF702 at igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
thanks for this. Zinn continues to be a hero of mine for this and
other statements.
Joe Berry
On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Below is the first part of an article published in The Progressive
> magazine. What is copied was also published in the Boston Globe. In
> view of the discussion held at a recent AWARE meeting concerning
> the election and Obama, I append at the end of the Globe segment
> (which castigates Obama for his stance on Afghanistan) what Zinn
> had to say about Obama and the election in The Progressive
> article. --mkb
>
> Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war
> Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – +
> By Howard Zinn
>
> July 17, 2008
> BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain
> says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports
sending
> more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all)
> troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in
Afghanistan.
>
> For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then
> has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders
> gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they
> not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of
> thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them
> children?
>
> Did we "win" by going to war in Korea? The result was a
stalemate,
> leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South
> Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million
> people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm
> on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
>
> Did we "win" in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only
after
> 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving
> children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers
> dead.
>
> Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam
> Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but
> perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for
> the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United
> States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths
> of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and
> set the stage for another war.
>
> In Afghanistan, the United States declared "victory" over the
> Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The
> recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq.
> What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will
> produce "victory"? And if it did, in an immediate military
sense,
> how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both
> sides?
>
> The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan is a good moment to
> reflect on the beginning of US involvement there. There should be
> sobering thoughts to those who say that attacking Iraq was wrong,
> but attacking Afghanistan was right.
>
> Go back to Sept. 11, 2001. Hijackers direct jets into the World
> Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing close to 3,000 A terrorist
> act, inexcusable by any moral code. The nation is aroused.
> President Bush orders the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan, and
> the American public is swept into approval by a wave of fear and
> anger. Bush announces a "war on terror."
>
> Except for terrorists, we are all against terror. So a war on
> terror sounded right. But there was a problem, which most Americans
> did not consider in the heat of the moment: President Bush, despite
> his confident bravado, had no idea how to make war against terror.
>
> Yes, Al Qaeda - a relatively small but ruthless group of fanatics -
> was apparently responsible for the attacks. And, yes, there was
> evidence that Osama bin Laden and others were based in Afghanistan.
> But the United States did not know exactly where they were, so it
> invaded and bombed the whole country. That made many people feel
> righteous. "We had to do something," you heard people say.
>
> Yes, we had to do something. But not thoughtlessly, not recklessly.
> Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious
> criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire
> neighborhood be bombed? There was soon a civilian death toll in
> Afghanistan of more than 3,000 - exceeding the number of deaths in
> the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of Afghans were driven from their
> homes and turned into wandering refugees.
>
> Two months after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Boston Globe story
> described a 10-year-old in a hospital bed: "He lost his eyes and
> hands to the bomb that hit his house after Sunday dinner." The
> doctor attending him said: "The United States must be thinking he
> is Osama. If he is not Osama, then why would they do this?"
>
> We should be asking the presidential candidates: Is our war in
> Afghanistan ending terrorism, or provoking it? And is not war
> itself terrorism?
>
> Howard Zinn is author of "A People's History of the United
> States."<dingbat_story_end_icon.gif>
>
> © Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
> Here is the addition from The Progressive:
>
> One might assume from the above that I can see no difference
> between McCain and Obama, that I see them as equivalent. Not so.
> There is a difference, not a significant enough difference for me
> to have confidence in Obama as President, but just enough for me to
> vote for Obama and to hope he defeats McCain.
> Whoever is President, the crucial factor for change will be how
> much agitation there is in the country on behalf of change. I am
> guessing that Obama may be more sensitive than McCain to such
> turmoil, since it will come from his supporters, from the
> enthusiasts who will register their disillusionment by taking to
> the streets. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a radical, but he was
> more sensitive to the economic crisis in the country and more
> susceptible to pressure from the Left than was Herbert Hoover.
> Even for the "purist" of radicals, there must be recognition of
> differences that may mean life or death for thousands. In France at
> the time of the Algerian war, the election of DeGaulle—hardly an
> anti-imperialist but more aware of the inevitable decline of empires
> —was significant in ending that long and brutal occupation.
> I have no doubt that by far the wisest, most reliable, with the
> most integrity, of all recent Presidential candidates is Ralph
> Nader. But I think it is a waste of his political strength, a puny
> act, to expend it in the electoral arena, where the result can only
> show weakness. His power, his intelligence, lies in the
> mobilization of people outside the ballot box.
> So yes, I will vote for Obama, because the corrupt political
> system offers me no choice, but only for the moment I pull down the
> lever in the voting booth.
> Before and after that moment i want to use whatever energy I have
> to push him toward a recognition that he must defy the traditional
> thinkers and corporate interests surrounding him, and pay homage to
> the millions of Americans who want real change.
> One more clarification. My lessons from history about the futility
> of "winning" should not be understood as meaning that what is
wrong
> with our policy in Iraq is that we can't win. It's that we
> shouldn't win, because it's not our country.
>
<dingbat_story_end_icon.gif>__________________________________________
> _____
> Peace mailing list
> Peace at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace
------------------------------------------
New address and phone as of 8/9/07:
Joe T. Berry
701 N Randolph St.
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone/fax: 217-378-4763
joeberry at igc.org
"Access to Unemployment Insurance Benefits for Contingent Faculty",
by Berry, Stewart and Worthen, published by Chicago COCAL, 2008.
Order from <www.chicagococal.org> Email or call number above for bulk
orders.
"Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher
Education". by Joe Berry, is out (2005) from Monthly Review Press
and North American Alliance for Fair Employment. Look at <http://
www.reclaimingtheivorytower.org> for full information, individual
sales, bulk ordering discounts, or to invite me to speak at an event.
See <www.chicagococal.org> Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic
Labor, for news, contacts and links related to non-tenure track,
"precarious" faculty.
See you at COCAL VIII conference, August 8-10 in San Diego. See
<www.cocal-ca.org> for details.
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